NOTES. 117 



Although it has been there so long it is still shy and wild, 

 except when captured after an injury, when it is very savage. 

 What age it really is, it is impossible to say, as it was an adult 

 bird when captured sixty-three years ago. 



' H. W. Robinson. 



Young have been raised both this year and last from the 

 mating of a male Barbary Dove, which has been in my 

 possession for twenty-three years, and a young female of 

 the same species. 



Richard Staples-Browne. 



In regard to the longevity of birds, the following translation 

 of a record by the late Herr H. C. Miiller in his " Fseroernes 

 Fuglefauna" may be of interest : — 



" A farmer at Sandhoe took in 1781, during the summer, two young 

 Herring-Gulls out of a nest and reared them at his home. He let 

 them have their freedom, and the Gulls, which appeared both to be 

 cocks, stayed sometimes near the house and sometimes in a field in 

 the neighbourhood, or even made short nights out to sea, from which, 

 however, they always came back. After some years one of the Gulls 

 was accidentally shot during one of these flights ; the other continued 

 its accustomed mode of life, and became so* tame that it took food out 

 of its master's hand. Finally, it paired with a wild Gull, and they 

 selected for a nesting place a rocky cliff (near by), from which the 

 cock bird, after the usual time, went back to the farmer's house in 

 company with his mate and half-grown young. During the summer 

 the Gull family lived mostly on the shore, especially when fishing was 

 good, and they then fed chiefly on offal from the fishing, as the entirely 

 wild Gulls do. When the fishing got slack, and particularly during 

 the winter, the pair of Gulls constantly sought food at the peasant's 

 house, and the cock bird still took what was handed to him. ... In 

 1846 these remarkably old Gulls were still living, and were conse- 

 quently sixty-five years old ; but, in spite of this advanced age, 

 carried on under such peculiar relations, there was neither in their 

 colour or in other respects any difference to be detected between them 

 and the entirely wild Gulls. In 1847 the old peasant died, and a short 

 time afterwards the Gulls also went away." 



Herr Miiller also mentions a Puffin which lived in a 

 peasant's house and yard for twenty-nine years, and finally 

 died as the result of an accident. 



C. B. TlCEHURST. 



UNUSUAL NESTING- SITES OF DIPPER, BLUE 

 TITMOUSE AND HOUSE-SPARROW. 



The following three nests, built under more or less abnormal 

 conditions, have this year come under my observation in the 

 Blantyre district of Clyde Valley : — 



1. Dipper (Cinclus aquaticus). — The site chosen was a tube- 

 shaped hollow branch at the root of a tree on the bank of a 



